India Nuclear News and Discussion 4 July 2011

[vishvak]

So as per messages above, the factors slowing down 3 stage Thorium nuke power program is:
* Lack of Plutonium
* Lack of Funding

Correct me if I am wrong, please.

[RoyG]

So as per messages above, the factors slowing down 3 stage Thorium nuke power program is:
* Lack of Plutonium
* Lack of Funding

Correct me if I am wrong, please.

It really just stems from one thing:

We still don't have a well thought out integrated strategic energy program.

India is now looking at MSRs and probably even lead reactors once the Russians commercialize it.

IMO, the sodium fast breeders will be limp leg of the program. I think we'll take safer shortcuts.

[Kakkaji]

Fast forwarding to thorium

What is the single greatest factor that prevents the large-scale deployment of thorium-fuelled reactors in India? Most people would assume that it is a limitation of technology, still just out of grasp. After all, the construction of the advanced heavy-water reactor (AHWR) — a 300 MWe, indigenously designed, thorium-fuelled, commercial technology demonstrator — has been put off several times since it was first announced in 2004. However, scientists at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre have successfully tested all relevant thorium-related technologies in the laboratory, achieving even industrial scale capability in some of them. In fact, if pressed, India could probably begin full-scale deployment of thorium reactors in ten years. The single greatest hurdle, to answer the original question, is the critical shortage of fissile material.

After decades of operating pressurised heavy-water reactors (PHWR), India is finally ready to start the second stage. A 500 MW Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) at Kalpakkam is set to achieve criticality any day now and four more fast breeder reactors have been sanctioned, two at the same site and two elsewhere. However, experts estimate that it would take India many more FBRs and at least another four decades before it has built up a sufficient fissile material inventory to launch the third stage. The earliest projections place major thorium reactor construction in the late 2040s, some past 2070. India cannot wait that long.

The obvious solution to India’s shortage of fissile material is to procure it from the international market. As yet, there exists no commerce in plutonium though there is no law that expressly forbids it. In fact, most nuclear treaties such as the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material address only U-235 and U-233, presumably because plutonium has so far not been considered a material suited for peaceful purposes. The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) merely mandates that special fissionable material — which includes plutonium — if transferred, be done so under safeguards. Thus, the legal rubric for safeguarded sale of plutonium already exists. The physical and safety procedures for moving radioactive spent fuel and plutonium also already exists.

[SSridhar]

Kudankulam 2nd reactor work apace - The Hindu

While preparing the second reactor for criticality next February, Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP) engineers are working overtime to resume power generation from the first unit after maintenance before mid-December.

The first reactor, after generating 6,873 million units of power in 9,267 hours, was shut down for annual maintenance on June 24. Fifty of the 163 enriched uranium fuel assemblies in the reactor (30 per cent of the spent fuel) have been removed.

Though the work was expected to be completed within 60 days and power generation resumed in the third week of August, the highly complex maintenance work has consumed more time. In other words, the first reactor will be ready for power generation before mid-December after the maintenance work, project sources said.

Similarly, the second unit, from which dummy fuel assemblies have been removed following the successful conduct of the “hot run”, will be ready for criticality in February 2016. Following the removal of dummy fuel assemblies, mandatory inspections and tests to be done prior to the loading of enriched uranium fuel assemblies are going on in the reactor.

On getting nod from the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, loading of actual fuel assemblies would commence. Since loading of enriched uranium fuel assemblies in the reactor will take two months, power generation in the second reactor may be expected only in February.

The unexpected delay in operationalising the first two reactors are not expected to reflect in the progress made in commencing the civil work on the third and fourth reactors as the KKNPP plans to commence the excavation of site before December-end.

[Kakkaji]

Locals oppose NPCIL's Chutka n-power project

A nuclear power project at Chutka village in tribal-dominated Mandla district is facing stiff opposition from villagers of the region.

Sanctioned in 2009, to be developed by Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL), the area in question (villages of Chutka, Tatighat, Kunda and Manegaon) is predominantly of Gonds, a scheduled tribe, and experienced an earthquake of 6.7 on the Richter scale in 1997. Most of them, they say, were displaced by the Bargi Dam in 1984 and now survive as marginal peasants and farm labour.

Supported by anti-nuclear power activists, the villagers now plan another spell of protests against the proposed project from the last week of this month. They say they are not ready to lose another part of their lives in a frustrating resettling process. Also, this land is highly fertile, with rich fishing sites at the Bargi dam reservoir in proximity. Being also near the Kanha tiger reserve, there is some additional income from tourists in winter.

[SaiK]

http://www.gatewayhouse.in/quiet-burial ... lear-deal/
interesting take... but, when it comes bhabha 3rd stage plans.. we have to negate all fixed costs and only use operational costs. we jingos like to see this happen.

[SSridhar]

Flash News, ToI

India and Australia to announce the completion of administrative arrangements between them for the nuclear deal.

[SSridhar]

India, Australia seal nuclear deal procedures - Puja Mehra, The Hindu

India announced on Sunday that the procedures for a civil nuclear agreement with Australia for supply of uranium from it had been completed following a bilateral meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his counterpart, Malcolm Turnbull, on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit here {Antalya, Turkey}.

External Affairs Ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup tweeted that the two Prime Ministers had announced the completion of the procedures. No official statement from Australia was immediately available.

“PM Modi thanked PM Trunbull and described the nuclear agreement as a milestone and source of trust and confidence,” Mr. Swarup tweeted.

Last month, speaking to presspersons in Delhi, Australian Trade and Investment Minister Andrew Robb said the Australian Parliament was expected to ratify the nuclear cooperation agreement that the two countries had signed in September 2014.

Australia has about a third of world’s recoverable uranium resources and exports nearly 7,000 tonnes of it a year.

Following the conclusion of the agreement, India will be the first country to buy Australian uranium without being a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

[SSridhar]

Report getting ready for 2 more FBRs - Dennis S Jesudasan, The Hindu

Even as the Department of Atomic Energy is working towards the commissioning of the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR), officials are preparing a Detailed Project Report for the construction of two units of Fast Breeder Reactors (FBRs) with the capacity of 600 MWe each in the nuclear complex at Kalpakkam, some 80 km south of Chennai.

“We are in the process of preparing the Detailed Project Report for FBRs 1 and 2. The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board’s special team constituted for the FBRs is also reviewing the Site Evaluation Report,” said P. Chellapandi, Chairman and Managing Director of the Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Limited (BHAVINI).

BHAVINI, a Central government enterprise, was established in 2004 to design, construct, commission and eventually operate the FBRs.

AERB clearance

Asked about the status of the PFBR, which is nearing completion, he said, “We are in the process of getting necessary clearances from the AERB. Once we get the clearance, we will work towards the criticality of the plant. Anyhow, we will try to complete within the deadline fixed for power generation in September 2016.” {Every month or so a report appears about nearing completion. Let us hope that by next year-end some power would flow from it though it is disappointing that it is taking too long a time}

The two units of FBRs would come up adjacent to their Prototype, which is about 97.64 per cent complete as on date. Besides the PFBR, Kalpakkam nuclear complex houses Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research and two units of Madras Atomic Power Station with a capacity of 220 MWe each.

No fly zone

Considering the importance of the nuclear complex, the Centre had in 2008 declared a no fly zone up to the height of 10,000 ft over the area within a radius of 10 km from nuclear installation.

[Philip]

We must give top priority to mastering FBTR tech and thorium as fuel.In the report posted below about "fast forwarding to Thorium",2040 is given as the date. How many of us will still be alive to see
that day?!

From the nation's power reqs,there is no alternative to embarking upon a holistic solution which includes massive investments in renewable solar and wind energy,plus the non-nuclear conventional sources of hydel and thermal. In fact,solar and wind are two areas where the field can be thrown open to 100% FDI if it hasn't been done so. Building N-plants are expensive and very time-consuming with an enormous safety regime to achieve and local fears to assuage.

[Philip]

A warning that should be taken exceptionally seriously in the context of ISIS being supported by Sunni/Wahaabi jihadism,close to Paki hearts.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opi ... 892629.ece

The bomb next door that’s ticking away
G PARTHASARATHY

India’s nuclear doctrine is unambiguous and the sooner the world is made aware of Pakistani adventurism, the better

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto lamented in his prison memoirs — as he awaited execution in 1977 — that while the “Christian, Jewish and Hindu” civilisations had nuclear weapons capability, it was the “Islamic civilization” alone that did not possess “full nuclear capability”. Saudi Arabia, Libya and others initially financed fulfilment of this Bhutto dream. Bhutto’s successors were liberal in transferring nuclear weapons technology and designs to Libya and Iran and offering such technology to Iraq.

These pan-Islamic views were and are shared by a number of Pakistan’s nuclear scientists. Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist strikes, two senior Pakistani nuclear scientists, Sultan Bashiruddin Mehmood and Chaudhri Abdul Majeed, were charged with helping Al Qaeda acquire nuclear weapons. Two other scientists, Suleiman Asad and Ali Mukhtar, wanted for questioning about their links with the Al Qaeda and Taliban, mysteriously disappeared while on a visit to Myanmar.

A ‘fact sheet’ published by the White House then stated that both Asad and Mukhtar had meetings with Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden during repeated visits to Kandahar, prior to 9/11. It is no secret that AQ Khan’ s successor, Samar Mubarak Mand, is also a hard-core Islamist, no less India-obsessed than AQ Khan. Pakistan’s contacts and partners for nuclear proliferation extended to Saudi Arabia, Iraq and even North Korea, with which it struck a deal for supplying enrichment technology in exchange for liquid-fuelled ‘Nodong’ missiles. It is not surprising that, given this dubious track record on nuclear proliferation, Pakistan has few backers for an Indian style ‘nuclear deal’, in the international community, apart from its ‘all-weather friend’ and partner in nuclear proliferation, the Peoples Republic of China.

India-centric doctrine

Having acquired nuclear weapons, Pakistan was initially at a loss to spell out its nuclear doctrine, apart from repeating the mantra that its nuclear deterrent was exclusively “India centric”. About a decade ago, Lt General Khalid Kidwai, the longtime head of strategic planning of Pakistan’s National (Nuclear) Command Authority declared that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons were “aimed solely at India”.

Kidwai added that Pakistan would use nuclear weapons if India conquered a large part of Pakistani territory, or destroyed a large part of its land and air forces. He also held out the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons if India attempted to “economically strangle” Pakistan, or push it to political destabilisation.

In the decade that has elapsed since Kidwai spoke, Pakistan has used its plutonium reactors and reprocessing plants in Khushab, located 200 km south of Islamabad, which have been supplied by China, to build light, relatively low-yield tactical nuclear weapons, mounted on short-range ‘Nasr’ missiles. Pakistan describes this development as indicating that it now has “full spectrum nuclear capability” to launch low-yield tactical weapons against Indian army formations along the international border.

On October 21, Pakistan’s foreign secretary, Aizaz Chaudhry, proclaimed: “Pakistan has built the infrastructure to launch a quick response to Indian aggression… Usage of low yield nuclear weapons would make it difficult for India to launch an attack against Pakistan.” While this may appear to make sense in the Rajasthan-Sind region, it is certainly not feasible in Punjab, where the border areas in Pakistan are densely populated. Surely, the Punjabi-dominated Pakistan army does not intend to use its inability to fight a conventional war, to nuke its own Punjabi brethren on its borders with India!

Unambiguous stand

India’s nuclear doctrine, first officially enunciated in January 2003, asserts that it intends to build and maintain a “credible nuclear deterrent”. While adopting a policy of “no first use”, it clarifies that its nuclear weapons will be used against an attack on Indian territory, or on Indian forces anywhere, in which nuclear or chemical weapons are used.

There is no ambiguity about the Indian doctrine. An attack on its territory, or its armed forces, in which nuclear weapons are used, irrespective of whether they are low-yield tactical nuclear weapons or strategic high-yield nukes, will face a massive nuclear response. The Pakistani civilian and military elite in Punjab will find the cost of an Indian response to Pakistan’s use of low-yield tactical nuclear weapons against Indian forces anywhere, not merely “unacceptable”, but also “unbearable”. Pakistan will be very foolish to test out Indian resolve to respond massively to its use of tactical nuclear weapons.

Pakistan will be particularly well advised to bear in mind the reality that Punjab province, where both its civilian and military elite live, is densely populated. Its cantonments facing India are in this province.

Moreover, Pakistan’s army has mounted military operations, involving the use of air power in certain cases, in populated areas of its three other provinces — Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Baluchistan and Sind. Thousands of innocent Pakistani civilians have perished in the damage the army has inflicted. The Punjabi army elite evidently regards people in these provinces as less than equal — a mindset that cost them dearly in Bangladesh. In seeking to dominate the Pashtuns in their homeland, the Punjabi-dominated army seems to forget that historically it is only the Sikhs in Punjab who have prevailed over the Pashtuns, till the Khyber Pass . It is self-evident that General Raheel Sharif is no Hari Singh Nalwa, who led the forces of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
Foolish adventurism

Dealing with Pakistani nuclear illusions and delusions needs a multi-pronged approach. First and foremost, Pakistan should be presented a stark picture of what would happen to its Punjab province if it resorts foolishly to nuclear adventurism, whether tactical or strategic. Diplomatically, India should expose the consequences to global nuclear safety and security, of Pakistan’s refusal to join a Fissile Materials Cut-off Treaty.

Given the Islamist inclinations of its nuclear scientists and a wide cross-section of its Punjabi military-nuclear establishment, and their past proliferation record, it will be necessary for responsible countries, to take serious note of the dangerous implications of Pakistan’s nukes falling into the wrong hands. An equally serious effort needs to be undertaken to expose China’s role in the development and expansion of Pakistan’s nuclear and missile arsenal. China, which has violated every international norm to curtail the proliferation of missile and nuclear weapons technology, believes it is not accountable to anyone, because it is a permanent member of the UN Security Council. This arrogance, by a country that professes to be a votary of peace, needs to be exposed.

The writer is a former High Commissioner to Pakistan

[Kakkaji]

Nuclear deal tops Japan PM Shinzo Abe's agenda during India visit

NEW DELHI: Shinzo Abe's maiden trip to India as the PM mid-December since the Narendra Modi government was voted to power could be historic with the two governments making efforts to seal the much-delayed civil nuclear cooperation besides expanding defence cooperation with an eye on contributing towards stability in the Asia-Pacific region.

At this point, I am not sure if the expensive imported nuclear power plants are viable against coal and solar. Imported Uranium and technology for the indigenously built nuclear power plants are all we need.

[Suraj]

India-Australia agreement complete

Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Malcolm Turnbull announced the completion of procedures, including administrative arrangements, for the India Australia Civil Nuclear Agreement in a meeting held on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Antalya, Turkey. According to a statement from the Prime Minister of India's office, Modi thanked Turnbull and said the nuclear agreement was "a milestone and source of trust and confidence".

The bilateral agreement was signed in September 2014 during a state visit to India by Tony Abbott, Australia's prime minister at the time. The agreement will open the door for Australian uranium to be exported for use to fuel India's nuclear power plants.

All of Australia's uranium production - over 5000 tU in 2014 - is exported under strict controls to ensure that it is only for civilian use. Australia is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but also requires any countries to which it sells uranium to put in place a rigorous bilateral safeguards treaty.

India can immediately begin uranium import: Julie Bishop, Australian Foreign Minister

India can begin import of uranium from Australia immediately, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has said, days after prime ministers of the two nations announced the completion of procedures necessary for a landmark bilateral nuclear deal.

The Australia-India nuclear cooperation agreement permits Australian companies to commence commercial uranium exports to India and provides the framework for "substantial new trade in energy" between the two countries, Bishop's office said.

[putnanja]

India plans to construct six more fast breeder reactors

...
On the first 500-MWe PFBR being set up, he said the PFBR (designed by Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research) construction is over and they are seeking clearance from the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) in phases for sodium charging, fuel loading, reactor criticality and power rising (generation).

"AERB had already sent many specialists to the PFBR and we are also going for review process. Some experts are going to meet this month and we are likely to get clearance for sodium charging, fuel loading, reactor criticality and power rising (generation).

"AERB had already sent many specialists to the PFBR and we are also going for review process. Some experts are going to meet this month and we are likely to get clearance for sodium charging. After this we have to get clearance for fuel loading and that may happen in January-February and the reactor may become critical in March or April 2016," Chellapandi said.

...

[Philip]

Time to get our act together asap and accelerate a massive increase in ABM defences,and enough BMs for the 3 services to deal with both Pak or China.China must be bluntly told that if a single N-bomb is dropped on India from Pak,gvien that Pak's WMDs were supplied by China, it will get an immediate N-response form India.We still allow the great bandicoot,Mush-a-Rat to visit India and spew his venom and lies about Kargil,etc. We have today another "Sheriff" of Pak,not Nawaz but the ghoul in uniform whose ambitions are very much in keeping with the Bandicoot.We cannot expect him to age peace with us during his term as chief. The way he has been handling things and cementing his grip on power,the ouster of Nawaz S. is not an "if" but "when?"

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 58501.html

Kargil war: Pakistan planned to drop nuclear bomb on India during conflict, says former CIA officer
A former CIA analyst revealed the information in an obituary for Sandy Berger, a former national security advisor to President Clinton [/b]

Pakistan planned to deploy nuclear weapons against India during the 1999 Kargil War, according to former top White House official.

The information was revealed after former CIA analyst, Bruce Riedel, wrote an obituary for Sandy Berger who died of cancer on Wednesday. Mr Berger and was a former national security advisor to the then American President Bill Clinton.

The CIA had warned President Clinton of the plans, which formed part of the daily top secret classified briefing on July 4, 1999, when he was scheduled to meet visiting Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.


Mr Riedel wrote: “The morning of the Fourth, the CIA wrote in its top-secret Daily Brief that Pakistan was preparing its nuclear weapons for deployment and possible use. The intelligence was very compelling. The mood in the Oval Office was grim.

“Berger urged Clinton to hear out Sharif, but to be firm.

“Pakistan started this crisis and it must end it without any compensation. The president needed to make clear to the prime minster that only a Pakistani withdrawal could avert further escalation.
Former Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Samuel 'Sandy' Berger

“Sandy knew Clinton better than anyone, his natural inclination was to find a deal. This time, no deal was possible, it must be an unequivocal Pakistani climbdown.

“It worked. Sharif agreed to pull back his troops. It later cost him his job: the army ousted him in a coup and he spent a decade in exile in Saudi Arabia. But the risk of a nuclear exchange in south Asia was averted.

"It was Berger's finest hour."

[panduranghari]

Philip saar,

Indian stance is clear isn't it? Pak uses 1 TNW. We obliterate Pak from the face of the earth. As Shiv saar says, we will willingly accept causalties just once. The paki jernails have to decide if they want to survive with their fiefdom intact. As Ramana saar says, Indian cold start doctrine was countered by paki a-bums. We have already countered paki a-bums with NFU and punitive damage doctrine. So why would China get involved?

[Vipul]

Given the smaller land mass and far fewer populated/strategic centers(compared to India) Pakistan knows it will be wiped out from massive retaliatory strikes that India will be taking post a nuclear attack, so a nuclear attack from Pakistan (should they finally go that route) will definitely be on multiple cities. Pakistan would be hoping that the SDRE Indians would be majority destroyed and and or shell shocked to do a riposte.

So either it is going to be multiple strikes on India or none at all.

[Karthik S]

Given the smaller land mass and far fewer populated/strategic centers(compared to India) Pakistan knows it will be wiped out from massive retaliatory strikes that India will be taking post a nuclear attack, so a nuclear attack from Pakistan (should they finally go that route) will definitely be on multiple cities. Pakistan would be hoping that the SDRE Indians would be majority destroyed and and or shell shocked to do a riposte.

So either it is going to be multiple strikes on India or none at all.

If we pickup any multiple launches of missiles from them will be assumed to be the scenario you mentioned. I'd assume we would have thought about it.

[Sid]

Time to get our act together asap and accelerate a massive increase in ABM defences,and enough BMs for the 3 services to deal with both Pak or China.China must be bluntly told that if a single N-bomb is dropped on India from Pak,gvien that Pak's WMDs were supplied by China, it will get an immediate N-response form India.We still allow the great bandicoot,Mush-a-Rat to visit India and spew his venom and lies about Kargil,etc. We have today another "Sheriff" of Pak,not Nawaz but the ghoul in uniform whose ambitions are very much in keeping with the Bandicoot.We cannot expect him to age peace with us during his term as chief. The way he has been handling things and cementing his grip on power,the ouster of Nawaz S. is not an "if" but "when?"

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 58501.html

Kargil war: Pakistan planned to drop nuclear bomb on India during conflict, says former CIA officer
A former CIA analyst revealed the information in an obituary for Sandy Berger, a former national security advisor to President Clinton [/b]

Pakistan planned to deploy nuclear weapons against India during the 1999 Kargil War, according to former top White House official.

The information was revealed after former CIA analyst, Bruce Riedel, wrote an obituary for Sandy Berger who died of cancer on Wednesday. Mr Berger and was a former national security advisor to the then American President Bill Clinton.

The CIA had warned President Clinton of the plans, which formed part of the daily top secret classified briefing on July 4, 1999, when he was scheduled to meet visiting Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.


Mr Riedel wrote: “The morning of the Fourth, the CIA wrote in its top-secret Daily Brief that Pakistan was preparing its nuclear weapons for deployment and possible use. The intelligence was very compelling. The mood in the Oval Office was grim.

“Berger urged Clinton to hear out Sharif, but to be firm.

“Pakistan started this crisis and it must end it without any compensation. The president needed to make clear to the prime minster that only a Pakistani withdrawal could avert further escalation.
Former Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Samuel 'Sandy' Berger

“Sandy knew Clinton better than anyone, his natural inclination was to find a deal. This time, no deal was possible, it must be an unequivocal Pakistani climbdown.

“It worked. Sharif agreed to pull back his troops. It later cost him his job: the army ousted him in a coup and he spent a decade in exile in Saudi Arabia. But the risk of a nuclear exchange in south Asia was averted.

"It was Berger's finest hour."

This story is actually true. They really did planned to use it.

On some other thread people were contesting on how deterrent our deterrence is, how clear our policy is. Well what I can say is Porkies don't give a shit about our policy statement. When pushed to wall they will use it without hesitation.

[RoyG]

'Possible use' man. Come on. This is too much Sid.

Do you honestly think the Pakjabi fashionistas with all their expensive toys and real estate will seriously threaten India with nuclear attack?

[Gagan]

Pakistan has 5-6 major population centers, which will need bigger maal, and about 20+ moderate population centers in Punjab alone, which will need smaller stuff.

[RoyG]

Pakistan has 5-6 major population centers, which will need bigger maal, and about 20+ moderate population centers in Punjab alone, which will need smaller stuff.

It'll all be gone. Don't worry retaliation will be MASSIVE. We'll throw about 100 nukes on them and be done with it. And save maybe another 100 for China. I don't trust the official stockpile figures.

[Prem]

Pakistan has 5-6 major population centers, which will need bigger maal, and about 20+ moderate population centers in Punjab alone, which will need smaller stuff.
It'll all be gone. Don't worry retaliation will be MASSIVE. We'll throw about 100 nukes on them and be done with it. And save maybe another 100 for China. I don't trust the official stockpile figures.

Only Paki trust the official numbers on Nuke inventory of India.

[disha]

Pakistan has 5-6 major population centers, which will need bigger maal, and about 20+ moderate population centers in Punjab alone, which will need smaller stuff.

Actually., only 7-8 moderate maal strategically placed can do the trick. Bakistan can then be left to stew in its own juice. Why waste any extra maal behind porkis?

[RoyG]

Pakistan has 5-6 major population centers, which will need bigger maal, and about 20+ moderate population centers in Punjab alone, which will need smaller stuff.

Actually., only 7-8 moderate maal strategically placed can do the trick. Bakistan can then be left to stew in its own juice. Why waste any extra maal behind porkis?

b/c they'll throw 95% of what they got at us and the rest at Israel. We'll stick to massive retaliation.

[Gagan]

Their youranium bums don't work. I KNOW !!!
They'll kill you with radiation poisoning right away / some skin burn / cancer 10 years later.

Must prevent them getting Poo bums

[Vipul]

Canada sends first consignment of uranium to India.

Canada has sent the first consignment of uranium to India that will help it in securing fuel for nuclear power reactors, official sources said today. "The first lot of 250 tonnes of Canadian uranium has been received in India," a senior government official said.
"The first shipment of uranium from Canada under a five-year contract signed in April has arrived in India. It marks Cameco's first supply of uranium to India," the sources said.

[Vipul]

Canada sends first consignment of uranium to India.

Canada has sent the first consignment of uranium to India that will help it in securing fuel for nuclear power reactors, official sources said today. "The first lot of 250 tonnes of Canadian uranium has been received in India," a senior government official said.
"The first shipment of uranium from Canada under a five-year contract signed in April has arrived in India. It marks Cameco's first supply of uranium to India," the sources said.

[kit]

The US will get serious only when a tnw surfaces up in terrorist hands right inside their home land ..rest assured they will emasculate the pakistanis for eternity !

[gakakkad]

The US will get serious only when a tnw surfaces up in terrorist hands right inside their home land ..rest assured they will emasculate the pakistanis for eternity !

terrorists already have a fission based device...and US is doing nothing about it...u think that just the extra yield of a tnw will change the american minds?

[kit]

The US will get serious only when a tnw surfaces up in terrorist hands right inside their home land ..rest assured they will emasculate the pakistanis for eternity !

terrorists already have a fission based device...and US is doing nothing about it...u think that just the extra yield of a tnw will change the american minds?

Sometimes like an ostrich pretending it doesn't exist ! .. and delusions of having it all "secured" !!

[SSridhar]

** Do not discuss Deterrence related or Pakistani & US issues here **

[SaiK]

Canada : 5K MT
Kazhakstan : 7K MT

Russia ?

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indi ... 114789.cms
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Russia trip set to boost nuke plan

It is also important to get the much safer MSR by BARC at a faster pace.. we need to utilize the vast thorium at home as well. Hopefully, the left-commie-kangrez don't let those sands be swindled before bhabha-3rd phase realization.

[SSridhar]

India-Japan sign the MoU for civilian nuclear energy

[chetak]

Canada : 5K MT
Kazhakstan : 7K MT

Russia ?

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indi ... 114789.cms
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Russia trip set to boost nuke plan

It is also important to get the much safer MSR by BARC at a faster pace.. we need to utilize the vast thorium at home as well. Hopefully, the left-commie-kangrez don't let those sands be swindled before bhabha-3rd phase realization.

any idea where exactly the sands went after they were spirited out??

[SSridhar]

India Is Building a Top-Secret Nuclear City to Produce Thermonuclear Weapons, Experts Say - Adrian Levy, Foreign Policy

Adrian Levy is trying to make it look that the Chitradurga facility is being built very covertly, and that he has stumbled upon a great discovery. The coming up of the plant was well known in India including its objectives.

CHALLAKERE, India — When laborers began excavating pastureland in India’s southern Karnataka state early in 2012, members of the nomadic Lambani tribe were startled. For centuries, the scarlet-robed herbalists and herders had freely crisscrossed the undulating meadows there, known as kavals, and this uprooting of their landscape came without warning or explanation. By autumn, Puttaranga Setty, a wiry groundnut farmer from the village of Kallalli, encountered a barbed-wire fence blocking off a well-used trail. His neighbor, a herder, discovered that the road from this city to a nearby village had been diverted elsewhere. They rang Doddaullarti Karianna, a weaver who sits on one of the village councils that funnel India’s sprawling democracy of 1.25 billion down to the grassroots.

Karianna asked officials with India’s state and central governments why the land inhabited by farming and tribal communities was being walled off, but they refused to answer. So Karianna sought legal help from the Environment Support Group, a combative ecological advocacy organization that specializes in fighting illegal encroachment on greenbelt land. But the group also made little progress. Officials warned its lawyers that the prime minister’s office was running the project. “There is no point fighting this, we were told,” Leo Saldanha, a founding member of the advocacy organization, recalled. “You cannot win.”

Only after construction on the site began that year did it finally become clear to the tribesmen and others that two secretive agencies were behind a project that experts say will be the subcontinent’s largest military-run complex of nuclear centrifuges, atomic-research laboratories, and weapons- and aircraft-testing facilities when it’s completed, probably sometime in 2017. Among the project’s aims: to expand the government’s nuclear research, to produce fuel for India’s nuclear reactors, and to help power the country’s fleet of new submarines.

But another, more controversial ambition, according to retired Indian government officials and independent experts in London and Washington, is to give India an extra stockpile of enriched uranium fuel that could be used in new hydrogen bombs, also known as thermonuclear weapons, substantially increasing the explosive force of those in its existing nuclear arsenal. {Isn't it the considered opinion of the West that India's TN weapon is a dud? Then, why worry about this?}

India’s close neighbors, China and Pakistan, would see this move as a provocation: Experts say they might respond by ratcheting up their own nuclear firepower. Pakistan, in particular, considers itself a military rival, {It can consider itself of anything, so what Mr Levy? You know more than most Americans about Pakistan and yet you are trying to make it look like an equal competition to seek some cheap popularity for your article and indulge in some scaremongering. China is way ahead of India in terms of n-weapons & delivery platforms. If Pakistan is equal to India, let it go ahead and build such capacities without American and Chinese help. Let's see.} having engaged in four major conflicts with India, as well as frequent border skirmishes.

New Delhi has never published a detailed account of its nuclear arsenal, which it first developed in 1974, and there has been little public notice outside India about the construction at Challakere and its strategic implications. The government has said little about it and made no public promises about how the highly enriched uranium to be produced there will be used. As a military facility, it is not open to international inspection.

But a lengthy investigation by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI), including interviews with local residents, senior and retired Indian scientists and military officers connected to the nuclear program, and foreign experts and intelligence analysts, has pierced some of the secrecy surrounding the new facility, parts of which are slated to open in 2016. This new facility will give India a nuclear capability — the ability to make many large-yield nuclear arms — that most experts say it presently lacks.

A nuclear stockpile in a dangerous neighborhood

The independent Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimates that India already possesses between 90 and 110 nuclear weapons, as compared to Pakistan’s estimated stockpile of up to 120. China, which borders India to the north, has approximately 260 warheads.

China successfully tested a thermonuclear weapon — involving a two-stage explosion, typically producing a much larger force and far greater destruction than single-stage atomic bombs — in 1967, while India’s scientists claimed to have detonated a thermonuclear weapon in 1998. But the test site preparations director at the time, K. Santhanam, said in 2009 it was a “fizzle,” rendering the number, type, and capability of such weapons in India’s arsenal uncertain to outsiders.

India, according to former Australian nonproliferation chief John Carlson, is one of just three countries that continue to produce fissile materials for nuclear weapons {because India was a late and unwilling entrant to the game and in fact was forced to do so by Australian duplicity in the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva by surreptitiously introducing the 'entry by force' clause and taking it to the UNGA bypassing the Conference. FMCT has many contentious issues to be resolved.} — the others are Pakistan and North Korea. The enlargement of India’s thermonuclear program would position the country alongside the United Kingdom, the United States, Russia, Israel, France, and China, which already have significant stockpiles of such weapons. {Are you worried about that?}

Few authorities in India are willing to discuss these matters publicly {How about public discussion of similar projects in other countries?} , partly because the country’s Atomic Energy Act and the Official Secrets Act shroud everything connected to the Indian nuclear program and in the past have been used to bludgeon those who divulge details. Spokesmen for the two organizations involved in the Challakere construction, the Defense Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), which has played a leading role in nuclear weapons design, declined to answer any of CPI’s questions, including about the government’s ambitions for the new park. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs also declined to comment. {Good}

The secret city emerges

Western analysts, speaking on condition of anonymity, say, however, that preparation for this enrichment effort has been underway for four years, at a second top-secret site known as the Rare Materials Plant, 160 miles to the south of Challakere, near the city of Mysore {Top secret? My foot. This facility is known to everyone}. Satellite photos of that facility from 2014 have revealed the existence of a new nuclear enrichment complex that is already feeding India’s weapons program and, some Western analysts maintain, laying the groundwork for a more ambitious hydrogen bomb project. It is effectively a test bed for Challakere, they say, a proving ground for technology and a place where technicians can practice producing the highly enriched uranium the military would need.

The Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change approved the Mysore site’s construction in October 2012 as “a project of strategic importance” that would cost nearly $100 million, according to a letter marked “secret,” from the ministry to atomic energy officials that month. Seen by CPI, this letter spells out the ambition to feed new centrifuges with fuel derived from yellowcake — milled uranium ore named after its color — shipped from mines in the village of Jadugoda in India’s north, 1,200 miles away from the Rare Materials Plant, and to draw water from the nearby Krishna Raja Sagar dam.

Finding authoritative information about the scope and objectives of these two massive construction projects is not easy. “Even for us, details of the Indian program are always sketchy, and hard facts thin on the ground,” a circumstance that leaves room for misunderstanding, a senior Obama administration official said in Washington. {Why should India tell everything it does to the US? Let the US misunderstand}

But Gary Samore, who served from 2009 to 2013 as the White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction, said there was little misunderstanding. “I believe that India intends to build thermonuclear weapons as part of its strategic deterrent against China,” said Samore. {Oh, a great discovery} It is unclear, he continued, when India will realize this goal of a larger and more powerful arsenal, but “they will.”

A former senior British official who worked on nuclear issues likewise said intelligence analysts on both sides of the Atlantic are “increasingly concerned” about India’s pursuit of thermonuclear weapons and are “actively monitoring” both sites. U.S. officials in Washington said they shared this assessment. “Mysore is being constantly monitored, and we are constantly monitoring progress in Challakere,” a former White House official said.

Robert Kelley, who served as the director of the Iraq Action Team at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 1992-1993 and 2001-2005, is a former project leader for nuclear intelligence at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He told CPI that after analyzing the available satellite imagery, as well as studying open source material on both sites, he believes that India is pursuing a larger thermonuclear arsenal. Its development, he warned, “will inevitably usher in a new nuclear arms race” in a volatile region.

However, Western knowledge about how India’s weapons are stored, transported, and protected, and how the radiological and fissile material that fuels them is guarded and warehoused — the chain of custody — remains rudimentary. After examining nuclear security practices in 25 countries with “weapons-usable nuclear materials,” the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), a nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, in January 2014 ranked India’s nuclear security practices 23rd, above only Iran and North Korea. An NTI analyst who asked to remain unnamed told CPI that India’s score stemmed in part from the country’s opacity and “obfuscation on nuclear regulation and security issues.” {This is a clever-by-half approach. We don't need your certification as to how good we are in these matters.}

But the group also noted the prevalence of corruption in India and the insecurity of the region: the rise of Islamist jihad fronts in India and nearby Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, as well as homegrown leftist insurgencies. “Many other countries, including China, have worked with us to understand the ratings system and better their positions.” But India did not, the NTI analyst said.

A culture of quiet

Like the villagers in Challakere, some key members of the Indian Parliament say they know little about the project. One veteran lawmaker, who has twice been a cabinet minister, and who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the topic, said his colleagues are rarely briefed about nuclear weapons-related issues.{Good, that is how it should be} “Frankly, we in Parliament discover little,” he said, “and what we do find out is normally from Western newspapers.” And in an interview with Indian reporters in 2003, Jayanthi Natarajan, a former lawmaker who later served as minister for environment and forests, said that she and other members of Parliament had “tried time and again to raise [nuclear-related] issues … and have achieved precious little.”

Nonetheless, Environment Support Group lawyers acting for the villagers living close to Challakere eventually forced some important disclosures. The region’s parliamentary representative heard about plans for the park from then-Indian Defense Minister A.K. Antony as early as March 2007, according to a copy of personal correspondence between the two that was obtained by the group and seen by CPI. (Antony declined to comment.)

This was the very moment India was also negotiating a deal with the United States to expand nuclear cooperation. That deal ended nearly three decades of nuclear-related isolation for India, imposed as a punishment for its first atom bomb test in 1974. U.S. military assistance to India was barred for a portion of this period, and Washington also withheld its support for loans by international financial institutions.

The agreement, which the two sides signed in 2007, was highly controversial in Washington. While critics warned it would reward India for its secret pursuit of the bomb and allow it to expand its nuclear weapons work, supporters emphasized that it included language in which India agreed to identify its civilian nuclear sites and open them to inspection by the IAEA.

India also said that it would refrain from conducting new atomic weapons tests. And in return for waiving restrictions on India’s civil nuclear program, the U.S. president was required to determine that India was “working actively with the United States for the early conclusion of a multilateral treaty on the cessation of the production of fissile materials for use in nuclear weapons.” In April 2006, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the deal would not trigger an arms race in the region or “enhance [India’s] military capacity or add to its military stockpile.” Rice added: “Moreover, the nuclear balance in the region is a function of the political and military situation in the region. We are far more likely to be able to influence those regional dynamics from a position of strong relations with India and indeed with Pakistan.”

Opponents of the deal complained, however, that it did not compel India to allow inspections of nine reactor sites known to be associated with the country’s military, including several producing plutonium for nuclear arms. The deal also allowed 10 other reactor sites subject to IAEA inspection to use imported uranium fuel, freeing up an indigenously mined supply of uranium that was not tracked by the international community — and could now be redirected to the country’s bomb program.

By May 2009, seven months after Congress ratified the U.S.-India nuclear cooperation deal, the Karnataka state government had secretly leased 4,290 acres adjacent to the villages of Varavu Kaval and Khudapura in the district of Chitradurga to the DRDO and another 1,500 acres to the Indian Institute of Science, a research center that has frequently worked with the DRDO and India’s nuclear industry, documents obtained by lawyers showed.

In December 2010, the state government leased a further 573 acres to the Indian Space Research Organisation and the BARC bought 1,810 acres. Councilor Karianna said the villagers were not told at the time about any of these transactions and that the documents, which the advocacy group obtained two years later in 2012, “were stunning. We were being fenced in behind our backs.”

Srikumar Banerjee, then-chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission, first offered an official glimpse of the project’s ambitions in 2011, when he told CNN’s India channel that the enrichment plant could be used to produce nuclear fuel, or slightly enriched uranium, to power India’s heavy- and light-water reactors. However, Banerjee added that the site would also have a strategic use, a designation that would keep international inspectors away. (India’s nuclear agreement with Washington and others provides no access to military-related facilities.)

High security, zero accountability

The sensitivity of the Challakere project became clearer after the Environment Support Group legal team filed a lawsuit in 2012 at the High Court of Karnataka, demanding a complete accounting of pastureland being seized by the authorities — only to learn from the state land registry that local authorities had granted the Indian army 10,000 acres too, as the future home for a brigade of 2,500 soldiers. The State Reserve Police, an armed force, would receive 350 acres, and 500 acres more had been set aside for a commando training center. The nuclear city would, in short, be ringed by a security perimeter of thousands of military and paramilitary guards.

In July 2013, six years after New Delhi greenlit the plans, an Indian environmental agency, the National Green Tribunal, finally took up the villager’s complaints. It dispatched investigators to the scene and demanded that each government agency disclose its ambitions in detail. The DRDO responded that national security trumped the tribunal and provided no more information; the other government entities simply continued construction.

While the IAEA would be kept out, villagers were being hemmed in. By 2013, a public notice was plastered onto an important local shrine warning worshippers it would soon be inaccessible. A popular altar for a local animist ceremony was already out of bounds.

“Then the groundwater began to vanish,” Karianna said. The district is semiarid, and local records, still written in ink, show that between 2003 and 2007, droughts had caused the suicides of 101 farmers whose crops failed. By 2013, construction had fenced off a critical man-made reservoir adjacent to Ullarthi. Bore wells dug by the nuclear and military contractors as the construction accelerated siphoned off other water supplies from surrounding villages.

Seventeen miles of 15-foot-high walls began to snake around the villagers’ meadows, blocking grazing routes and preventing them from gathering firewood or herbs for medicine. Hundreds rallied to knock holes into the new ramparts. “They were rebuilt in days,” Karianna said, “so we tried again, but this time teams of private security guards had been hired by someone, and they viciously beat my neighbors and friends.”

BARC and the DRDO still provided no detailed explanations to anyone on the ground about the scope and purpose of their work, Karianna added. “Our repeated requests, pleadings, representations to all elected members at every level have yielded no hard facts. It feels as if India has rejected us.” Highlighting local discontent, almost all of the villagers ringing the kavals boycotted the impending general election, a rare action since India’s birth as a democracy in 1947. The growing local discontent, and the absence of public comment by the United States or European governments about the massive project, eventually drew the attention of independent nuclear analysts.

From centrifuges to submarines

Serena Kelleher-Vergantini, an analyst at the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington-based nonprofit, scoured all the available satellite imagery in the summer of 2014. Eventually, she zeroed in on the construction site in the kavals. The journal IHS Jane’s Intelligence Review was separately doing the same in London, commissioning Kelley, formerly of the IAEA, to analyze images from the Mysore plant.

What struck both of them was the enormous scale and ambition of the projects, as well as the secrecy surrounding them. The military-nuclear park in the kavals, at nearly 20 square miles, has a footprint comparable in size to the New York state capital, Albany. After analyzing the images and conducting interviews with atomic officials in India, Kelleher-Vergantini concluded that the footprint for enrichment facilities planned in the new complex would enable scientists to produce industrial quantities of uranium (though the institute would only know how much when construction had progressed further). As Kelley examined photos of the second site, he was astonished by the presence of two recently expanded buildings that had been made lofty enough to accommodate a new generation of tall, carbon-fiber centrifuges, capable of working far faster to enrich uranium than any existing versions.

Nuclear experts express the productiveness of the enrichment machines in Separative Work Units (SWUs). Kelley concluded that at the second site, the government could install up to 1,050 of these new hyper-efficient machines, which, together with about 700 older centrifuges, could complete 42,000 SWUs a year — enough, he said, to make roughly 403 pounds of weapons-grade uranium. A new hydrogen bomb, with an explosive force exceeding 100,000 tons of TNT, requires only between roughly 9 and 15 pounds of enriched uranium, according to the International Panel on Fissile Materials, a group of nuclear experts from 16 countries that seek to reduce and secure uranium stocks.

Retired Indian nuclear scientists and military officers said in interviews that India’s growing nuclear submarine fleet would be the first beneficiary of the newly produced enriched uranium.

India presently has just one indigenous vessel, the INS Arihant, constructed in a program supervised by the prime minister’s office. Powered by an 80-megawatt uranium reactor developed by BARC that began operating in August 2013, it will formally enter military service in 2016, having undergone sea trials in 2014. A second, INS Aridhaman, is already under construction, with at least two more slated to be built, a senior military officer said in an interview. Each would be loaded with up to 12 nuclear-tipped missiles. The officer, who was not authorized to be named, said the fleet’s expansion gained a new sense of urgency after Chinese submarines sailed across the Bay of Bengal to Sri Lanka in September and October 2014, docking in a port facility in Colombo that had been built by Chinese engineers.

Asked what else the additional uranium would be used for, a senior scientist at the DRDO, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said it would mostly be used to fuel civilian nuclear power reactors and contribute to what he called “benign medical and scientific programs.” The government has not made such a promise publicly, however, or provided details. India does not have to report what it does with its indigenous uranium, “especially if it is not in the civilian domain,” said Sunil Chirayath, a research assistant professor at Texas A&M University who is an expert on India’s civilian nuclear program.

A senior Obama administration official in Washington, who was not authorized to be quoted by name, expressed skepticism about the government scientist’s private claim. The official said that India’s civilian nuclear programs, including power stations and research establishments, were actually benefiting from new access to imported nuclear fuel after the embargo’s removal in 2007 and now require almost “no homemade enriched uranium.”

India has already received roughly 4,914 tons of uranium from France, Russia, and Kazakhstan, for example, and it has agreements with Canada, Mongolia, Argentina, and Namibia for additional shipments. In September 2014, then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott signed an agreement to make Australia a “long-term, reliable supplier of uranium to India” — a deal that has sparked considerable controversy at home.

The International Panel on Fissile Materials estimates that the Arihant-class submarine core requires only about 143 pounds of uranium, enriched to 30 percent — a measure of how many of its isotopes can be readily used in weaponry. Using this figure and the estimated capacity of the centrifuges India is installing in Mysore alone — not even including Challakere — Kelley concluded that even after fueling its entire submarine fleet there would be 352 pounds of weapons-grade uranium left over every year, or enough to fuel at least 22 H-bombs. (His calculation presumes that the plant is run efficiently and that its excess capacity is purposeful and not driven by bureaucratic inertia — two large uncertainties in India, a senior U.S. official noted. But having a “rainy day” stockpile to deter the Chinese might be the aim, the official added.)

Thermonuclear doctrine and the China threat

A retired official who served inside the nuclear cell at the Indian prime minister’s office, the apex organization that supervises the military nuclear program, conceded that other uses besides submarines had been anticipated “for many years.” He pointed to a “thermonuclear bomb program” as “a beneficiary” and suggested India had had no choice but to “develop a new generation of more powerful megaton weapons” if it was to maintain “credible minimum deterrence.”

Previously, this meant the bare minimum required to prevent an attack on India, but a new Indian doctrine in 2003 — in response to Pakistan’s increasingly aggressive nuclear posture — altered this notion: “Nuclear retaliation to a first strike will be massive and designed to inflict unacceptable damage.” China, the retired official said, “has long had a thermonuclear capability, and if India is to have a strategic defense worth its salt, and become a credible power in the region, we need to develop a similar weapon and in deployable numbers.” U.S. and British officials affirmed that they have been aware of this discussion among Indian scientists and soldiers for years.

In an interview, Gen. Balraj Singh Nagal, who from 2008 to 2010 ran India’s Strategic Forces Command within its Nuclear Command Authority, the group that manages India’s nuclear forces, declined to discuss specific aspects of the nuclear city in Challakere or the transformation of the Rare Materials Plant close to Mysore. But keeping pace with China and developing a meaningful counter to its arsenal was “the most pressing issue” facing India, he said.

“It’s not Pakistan we are looking at most of the time, like most in the West presume,” Nagal said. “Beijing has long managed a thermonuclear program, and so this is one of many options India should push forward with, as well as reconsidering our nuclear defense posture, which is outdated and ineffective. We have to follow the technological curve. And where China took it, several decades before us, with the hydrogen bomb, India has to follow.”

The impact of the U.S.-India nuclear deal and India’s fissile production surge on the country’s neighbors can already be seen. “Pakistan recently stepped up a gear,” the former senior British official said. He pointed to an increase in Pakistan’s plutonium production at four new military reactors in the city of Khushab; a reprocessing plant known as Pinstech, near Islamabad; a refurbished civilian plutonium reprocessing plant converted to military use in an area known as Chashma; and “the ramping up of uranium production at a site in Dera Ghazi Khan.”

The retired British official added: “India needs to constantly rethink what deterrence means, as it is not a static notion, and everyone understands that. But the balance of power in the region is so easily upset.” {What a contradictory and confusing statement !} The official said that in choosing to remain publicly silent, the United States was taking a risk, evidently to try and reap financial and strategic rewards.

Does Washington know?

Officials at the Pentagon argued privately before Washington reached its 2008 nuclear deal with India that lifting sanctions would lead to billions of dollars’ worth of sales in conventional weapons, according to a U.S. official privy to the discussions. That prediction was accurate, with U.S. exports of major weapons to India reaching $5 billion from 2011 to 2014 and edging out Russian sales to India for the first time.

“But the U.S. is also looking for something intangible: to create a new strategic partner capable of facing down China,” and so India has taken advantage of the situation to overhaul its military nuclear capability, the British official noted. Pushing back China, said the official, who has worked for 30 years in counterterrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and nonproliferation, especially in Southern Asia, is regarded as being “in everyone’s interest.”

White House officials declined to comment on this claim on the record. But Robert Einhorn, the State Department’s former top nonproliferation official, told the Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference in March that some officials in the Bush administration had the ambition, in making a nuclear deal with India, to “work together to counter China, to be a counterweight to an emerging China.” He added that, in his view, that ambition has not been realized, due to India’s historic insistence on pursuing an independent foreign policy. He also said the nuclear deal had unfortunate repercussions, because other nations concluded that Washington was playing favorites with India.

In Challakere, construction continues despite a ruling by the National Green Tribunal in August 2014 calling for a stay on all “excavation, construction and operation of projects” until environmental clearances had been secured. Justice M. Chockalingam and R. Nagendran of the tribunal ordered blocked roads reopened with access given to all religious sites. But when villagers attempted to pass over or through the fences and walls in the winter of 2014, they were met by police officers who hand out photocopied notes in English: “Environmental clearances has [sic] been awarded [to BARC] dated 24 July 2014, which is a secret document and cannot be disclosed.”

Councilor Karianna said: “Still, to this day, no one has come to talk to me, to explain to us, what they are doing to our land.”

“Is this what ‘national interest’ means?” he asked, looking out over the rolling pasture, enveloped in the red dust kicked up by diggers. “We sit beneath our ancient trees and watch them tear up the land, wondering what’s in store.”

This story was written by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C., and was originally published on its website.

The Center for Public Interest’s national security managing editor R. Jeffrey Smith contributed to this article from Washington, D.C.

[arshyam]

The enlargement of India’s thermonuclear program would position the country alongside the United Kingdom, the United States, Russia, Israel, France, and China, which already have significant stockpiles of such weapons.

It's interesting how Israel is positioned as a declared and accepted nuclear power, while we are reduced to the level of Pakistan. It shows who has been behind the India-Pak equal-equal campaign.

[Lisa]

Arshyamji,

Its more than that. Israel had a better and more reliable deterrent than India despite having significantly smaller infrastructure vis-a-vis design, development and production. Remember you are not TFTA!

[arshyam]

True, and quite frankly, their reasons of having a nuke deterrent are not that strong - one look at their neighbours is enough to convince that they are paper tigers onlee. Anyway, I don't grudge Israel for investing in deterrence (it could also be tied in with their small geographic footprint and their history), but I take exception to the bhestern press' bunching us with our neighbour to the northwest as though we are just kids playing around with grown up stuff. They need to grow up, and IMHO the only way that will happen is a) build a long range deterrent greater than 10K, and b) make the Pakistani nukes everybody's problem, as opposed to just India's as it is today.

[schinnas]

Posting this in this thread as I believe this may some applications for nuclear simulations that need huge computing power.

I recently visited the Supercomputer Education and Research Center in eye eye yes see and got to chit chat with some Profs there. I was told that NaMo govt has approved an USD 800 Million project to develop a network of super computers with IISc acting as the orchestration center / nodal agency. IISc has a shiny new 1 peta flop Cray super computer imported from Massa, which can be upgraded to multi peta flops. If everything goes per plan, India will have in next few years a network of several petaflop and above large super computers (each of which would rank in top 200 super computers in the world) and about a dozen or more smaller super computers - all of which connected by a secure network. NaMo admininstration seems to act with impressive speed to catch up with China in super computing capabilities.

I was told about weather modeling, etc., as potential use cases, but do believe there are other obvious strategic use cases as well.

Admins - remove this post if you believe any of the information is confidential. I didn't expect information regarding public academic institutions confidential. I was not told that it is confidential (neither was i told it is not).